Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/13

Rh The foregoing examples of orthodox railroad methods will suffice to indicate the moral caliber of the unprincipled lot who have managed to steal their way into ownership of our transportation systems. Now, let us glance for a few moments at the way in which they are concentrating and consolidating their forces, in order to exploit Labor the better.

The pioneer railroad capitalists were men of comparatively small means. In the early days hundreds of small companies sprang up, each operating a little stretch of railroad, furnishing transportation to a limited district. But soon a strong current towards combination set in. Gradually the stronger financial groups absorbed the weaker ones (mostly by chicanery and fraud) and linked their many little "jerk-water" roads together, eventually building up the gigantic railroad systems of today.

The history of the New York Central is typical: Originally between New York and Buffalo, the present main line of the New York Central, there were sixteen separate railroads, each owned and operated by a distinct company. But the notorious Vanderbilt he who gave expression to the two working principles of capitalistic railroading; namely, "All the traffic will bear," and "The public be damned" grabbed control of all these petty roads and jammed them into one. Then he reached out and seized, one after the other, a whole series of big railroad systems, including the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, Michigan Central, Big Four, Pittsburgh & Lake Erie, Boston & Albany, Erie, etc., each of which in turn had been built up of many small roads. Besides this, the growing octopus secured strong hold of such roads as the Delaware & Hudson; Delaware, Lackawanna & Western; Philadelphia & Reading; New York, Ontario & Western; Lehigh Valley, etc., and large numbers of trolley lines, coal mines,